Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Ugh this sounds familiar.

Back in 2008-2010 I was one of two sitting students on the Computer Science curriculum committee at Rensselaer Polytechnic University (RPI).

Three topics were always present:

1. What do we do about kids who come in knowing inadequate math and how does this keep happening?

2. Should we consider switching out C/C++ as the default for Java as the default. (The answer to this was almost always no, but many professors at RPI accepted assignments in multiple languages, usually whatever the TAs were familiar with. I used a lot of python later in the year instead of C/C++/Java)

3. God damn it we are understaffed.

I hate to say it but #3 was always brought up near the end of every meeting and was visibly discouraging to all the teachers involved. RPI at the time was on the war-path of cutting professors in every single field who did not participate in research (so called "clinical faculty") which included letting one of the best CS professors go.

That teacher for you RPI alum was Dave Hollinger. They let him go(?) at the end of '08 but he taught a single class in '09 before leaving for good. Everyone loved him. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=100535

I didn't love him. I didn't dislike him or anything, he's a nice person, but most of my other CS professors were better teachers than he was. His lecturing style was dry and boring, and his selection of course material and assignments was mediocre. (The threading assignment in Operating Systems didn't even involve running more than one thread concurrently. You spawned a thread and immediately waited for it!) Looking at the recent OS course website I googled (Goldschmidt's) the assignments are more rigorous and more interesting.

Maybe part of the problem is the misnomer of the whole field itself. CS is not really science, it's math. It's about tools that every professional and scientist will later need. And as such, I'd argue that teaching is actually more important than research.

Of course, these tools need to be researched and developed as well, but more importantly do we need very capable teachers in order for people to build their foundation. IMO every Master of Science should have a good overview of which tools in math and "CS" there are available, and they should be proficient in at least two of each.

No we do science too. Math is a fundamental part of lots of CS branches but we also do straight up science (with the whole research question, hypothesis, experiment, evaluate cycle).

I'm willing to be convinced either way, but it seems to me that there's nothing in computer science you can't figure out by thinking or using pen and paper (maybe a lot of pen and paper). You don't have to "ask nature" as Feynman would say. Contrast that with figuring out the Gravitational constant, say. The only way to estimate its value is by doing some careful measurements (i.e. asking nature). Sure there may be some calculations, but without the measurements, they're a waste of time.

As much as my life has gone great, I really wonder what would've happened if I'd gone to RPI rather than RIT.

Rochester is a tough place to go to college, but Troy is even worse. I wouldn't second guess it.

I grew up in Rochester and only recently began to appreciate it; curious to hear what your opinion is.

I went to RIT many years ago. In retrospect, I view it as a variation on a trade school, which isn't a bad thing. The co-op program was valuable, but I wish there was more focus on entrepreneurship. Maybe that has changed, but at the time the focus was definitely on job placement.

Curious: What do you consider adequate math for an beginning CS student?

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